The most important issue that Jordan cites should come as no surprise. As I’ve commented before the Commission hopes to be as inclusive as possible in commemorating the Civil War era and that will mean acknowledging, among other things, the importance of race, including the centrality of emancipation and the contributions of black Americans to securing their freedom through their service in the Union army. While the Commission is committed to this goal of inclusiveness it may be difficult recruiting or convincing African Americans to take part in various events. And the reason for this, which Jordan cites, is that many black Americans view the symbols of the Confederacy through the prism of "Massive Resistance". Simply put, they consider those symbols to be offensive. I am not making a normative claim as to how people ought to interpret those symbols, but simply reporting that the black community does in fact subscribe to this view. And anyone who understands the history of symbols such as the Confederate flag should be able to sympathize with this view. I heard the very same thing during my interviews of NPS personnel. As long as those symbols are present on the battlefields it will be difficult to attract the attention of the black community or convince them that those symbols are not being used to reinforce an interpretation designed to exclude or minimize their claims to the past. This is, of course, very difficult given that reenactors and others use the Confederate flag for historical purposes.

I don’t know what the solution is or if there is one at all.

Jordan also raised a few other concerns. Most importantly he speculates that there may be very little enthusiasm for the Sesquicentennial across the board. Visitorship is down at places such as Monticello, the Smithsonian, and the Civil War Library and Museum in Philadelphia. We’ve also heard recently that the American Civil War Museum at Tredegar is not meeting the levels they expected and the Museum of the Confederacy continues to deal with declining numbers. It should also be pointed out that the First World War Centennial will overlap the sesquicentennial by two years (2014-2018). I mentioned in my last post that the federal government has yet to create a Civil War Commission, but it is likely that they will devote significant energy to planning events for First World War commemorations – the planning of which will surely not generate the same kind of political tensions that the Civil War engenders. Jordan speculates that the federal government will use the opportunity to "reinvigorate homeland patriotism in the Global War on Terrorism" which would not be surprising given the effort to use the Centennial as a way to unify the nation during the Cold War.

It is much to early to speculate as to how the Sesquicentennial will play out both here in Virginia and elsewhere. As mentioned before the Virginia Commission has taken the lead in planning for the event, but it will also need to consider what it will mean for someone to have participated in the Sesquicentennial. Perhaps we should move away from numbers alltogether and focus on projects such as James I. Robertson’s proposal that every community in Virginia transcribe their 1860 census report. It’s a brilliant idea because it is worthwhile as a historical endeavor, it brings people together around local history and it has the potential to attract significant interest without its success necessarily depending on it.

No one should expect that any amount of planning will shift the general public’s attention away from "To Catch a Predator" to questions of history. Those days may be over for good assuming it was ever true.

Is it just me or does anyone else find it bizarre that Dimitri Rotov would question why a historiographical overview of Lincoln scholar Phil Paludan’s contributions cannot be found in eulogies published in non-academic settings?

Yesterday I was asked to put together a panel for the June 2008 meeting of the Society for Civil War Historians which will take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The topic of the panel is the teaching of the Civil War in the high school classroom. I’ve got most of the line-up worked out and it promises to be an interesting panel. The first person I contacted was James Percoco who teaches at West Springfield High School in Springfield, Virginia. He is one of the most innovative teachers in the field and he has published extensively on topics related to the classroom as well as public history. His most recent book is titled My Summer With Lincoln which is forthcoming from the Fordham University Press. I am excited about the opportunity to talk about a subject I care deeply about and just as pleased that Jim is available to take part. That said, I do have one concern. I have no doubt that we will receive some excellent feedback from whomever is in the audience, but more than likely it won’t be from fellow high school teachers. The format for this conference will be familiar to those who attend academic gatherings and the participants will likely be the same faces that can be seen at the SHA, OAH, and AHA. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this as academic conferences serve an important function for historians engaged in scholarly pursuits. The OAH has done quite a bit to broaden its membership base to include high school teachers, but I wonder if the SCWH can go one step further.

I remember some comments from Ethan Rafuse a few months back when this conference was first advertised. He was concerned about the financial demands involved in traveling to another conference and suggested that the organization concentrate on setting up sessions at well-established venues. Ethan has a point here, but only if the mission of the SCWH is envisioned along similar lines. I think there is a unique opportunity to shape this conference and the organization as a whole in a way that branches off in new directions. We work in a field that enjoys a great amount of attention and interest from the general public. Civil War historians enjoy a notoriety that is unparalleled in the academic world of historical studies. Many have reached out to the general public in various ways through roundtable talks, battlefield tours, and conferences such as Gary Gallagher’s battlefield tours/lectures through the University of Virginia’s School of Continuing Studies and Mark Snell’s program at Shepherd University. What these programs suggest to me is that there is a demand for a setting that fosters serious thought about a subject we are all passionate about. My participation in Snell’s most recent conference on Civil War memory has convinced me that the interest level of the general public does extend beyond the narrow confines of battlefields and generals.

I am not suggesting anything along the lines of radical change in the planning for our first meeting next June. We can still set up panels that address the most obscure topics under the sun, but it is easy to imagine a fairly wide range of subjects that more general Civil War enthusiasts would find interesting. What I am suggesting is that the SCWH begin by making sure the conference is advertised widely. For example, readers of North and South magazine along with a few of the other glossies should know about the meeting. Perhaps a few panels could be organized to address perceptions between the general public and the academic world. We’ve surely seen a few of those issues heat up recently in the blogosphere. The inclusion of a broader base could help foster closer ties between the general public and academic community. Philadelphia includes a number of Civil War-related sites. The SCWH could follow the AHA and organize tours of some of these sites.

I’ve been a member of the SCWH for a few years now and I couldn’t be more excited about the decision to hold a conference. Historians talk a great deal about the importance of history in the life and identity of a country. The SCWH is in a unique position to give substance to that mantra. This is an opportunity to shape our organization in a way that has the broadest appeal without losing its scholarly focus and commitment to furthering our understanding of this crucial moment in our nation’s history.

This is an op-ed piece written by my friend and fellow Civil War historian Aaron Sheehan-Dean. The piece appeared in the Florida Times Union on March 13, 2007 during the height of the debate surrounding the changing of the school named after Forrest. Click here for the latest.

The current debate over renaming Nathan Bedford Forrest High School has generated some unusually inaccurate representations of the past. Two issues have been singled out: the actions of Forrest’s troops at Fort Pillow, Tennessee in 1864 and Forrest’s involvement with the Ku Klux Klan.

The most authoritative assessment by a professional historian, John Cimprich’s Fort Pillow, A Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory concludes that Confederate troops did massacre black Union troops at Fort Pillow in 1864. Black soldiers died at rates twice as high as that of the white soldiers inside the fort. Anecdotal evidence from Confederates and surviving Union soldiers also demonstrates that Confederates killed black soldiers before they surrendered. Nothing suggests that this was a premeditated act but that hardly lessons its shame. This was not an isolated incident, as recent books on Civil War atrocities make plain. The North’s decision to enlist and arm black men to fight against the South enraged white southerners and Confederates responded with acts of personal violence at Fort Pillow, Saltville, the Crater, and numerous other engagements.

Forrest was the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. It has been noted that he resigned from the Klan after it became more violent. This action suggests that there was some acceptable or benign KKK. Such an institution never existed. From the moment of the war’s end, if not before, white southerners began organizing to narrow the meaning of emancipation for African Americans. The KKK, and other groups like it, sought to deny blacks the right to participate in the civic life of the South. Like modern terrorist groups, they used both premeditated and random violence to terrify and isolate a subject population. They were widely supported by white southerners, and even after their ostensible destruction by federal legal efforts in the 1870s, Klan cells continued to target black leaders through their home in the Democratic Party.

The most important date in this controversy is 1958, the year that the School Board commemorated Forrest by naming a school after him. That act came in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which required the desegregation of school facilities across the country. Naming a school after Forrest added insult to the injury already done to black Jacksonville residents by the fact of segregated schools. It stands as a parting shot in the debate over access to public education and should be repudiated today.

In recent weeks, writers in the Times-Union have referred to Forrest as a "civil rights advocate" (3/6/07) and a "humane" slave trader (12/29/06). These descriptions are historical absurdities. Slave traders made their living literally off of the flesh of others; there was nothing humane in the practice, as scholarship over the past forty years has amply demonstrated. After the Civil War, few white northerners and even fewer white southerners worked to protect the rights of black Americans. The federal government abandoned blacks to the violence and ostracism of the Jim Crow South. The above statements reflect a desperate attempt to remake Forrest in our values. This is not just an impossibility but intellectually and morally dishonest. As our society changes, so do our values. Nathan Bedford Forrest does not represent the values of our day. Does this mean that we should forget him? No, but neither should we commemorate him.

The annual meeting of the Society of Civil War Historians will take place in Richmond this November as part of the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association. Finally, I will get to attend the SHA. The SCWH’s panel will feature A. Wilson Greene, John Coski, and Alex Wise. Greene will discuss interpreting combat at Civil War historic sites; Coski will examine the recent challenges that the Museum of the Confederacy has faced in promoting the history of the Confederacy; and Wise will discuss the American Civil War Center’s new exhibit which interprets the Civil War from multiple perspectives in the former capital of the Confederacy. This promises to be a first-rate panel.

The 2008 meeting of the SHA is scheduled for New Orleans and I’ve been asked to join a panel for the meeting of the SCWH. The panel will cover Civil War and technology. I will be joining Mark Grimsley, Anne Sarah Rubin, and George Rable who organized the panel. My topic is Civil War blogging, which is perfect as I’ve been wanting to write something about this "long strange trip."